Understanding the difference between strategy and tactics can mean everything in your business.
On today’s episode Russell shares the difference between tactics and strategy after an attendee at Funnel Hacking Live complained about the content of day one. He tells why strategy is the key and tactic is just an element.
Here are some interesting things to listen for in this episode:
So listen below to hear what someone else had to say about Funnel Hacking Live, and why Russell thinks he’s wrong.
---Transcript---
What’s up everybody? This is Russell, I am out taking the garbage out, Sunday night. And it’s a beautiful night, a little chilly, but looking out there’s a really cool ski hill called Bogus Basin here in Idaho. Anyway, where my house is at and I’m taking garbage out, I go out and I can see the mountain and the mountain is all dark and where the ski hill is, is all lit up and looks insanely cool. So that’s kind of fun right now.
But I had a quick message for you guys because I just wanted to make sure everyone’s paying attention. Because I feel like sometimes you can show people gold. Be like, “Hey, here’s gold. You want some?” and the smart people see that and they’re like, “Oh sweet.” And they take it. And there’s other people who say, “That’s not real gold. I didn’t want gold. I wanted platinum. I came for diamonds, why are you trying to give me gold.” I’m like, “Dude, there’s gold. You can sell it and buy diamonds.”
So let me explain this metaphor. Funnel Hacking Live last week, insane. Those of you there, you know, you experienced it. It was just amazing. And we’re starting planning next year’s and I think I finally figured out a way, took me three days, but I think I figured out a way to make it better than last time. I’m not sure yet, but I’m excited to try. That’s going to be in time, I got a year to plan it, so that’s going to be sweet.
But it was an awesome event and of the three days, day one was probably my favorite day because I think what I got to share got me most excited. I shared the first section of the book, which is how to build a mass movement. Went into all the strategy and the tactics behind how to do that. I wanted to break those out, because there’s two different things, strategy and tactics. Then I had a chance to go into the story. We talked about epiphany bridge stories. I showed the strategy and tactics behind that. Then Brandon and Kaelin spoke the first day. Jim Edwards spoke the first day, it was awesome. All the days were good, but the first day was, I was most excited about what I taught the first day.
Anyway, that was good, I thought. For those who were there, it was good right? Pretty amazing? It’s basically a year, more than a year, deep year of my thought, what I’ve been trying to really show and teach and coach everybody through. And what the new book’s going to be really going deep into. So it was also a big preface for the Expert Secrets book which is coming out April 18th. So anyway, most people were there and they got that and went and ran away with it. But then one of my buddies, one of my friends showed me the other day some post that one of the guys at the event posted in his private members area.
I know who this guy is, I’ve been watching him for a while, he’s been doing some cool things. But his business isn’t that big yet, he’s kind of……I won’t make fun of him publicly, I might later. We’ll stop for now. In his members group he posted, he said, “Day one of Funnel Hacking Live was stupid. Not a single tactic was taught. Blah, blah, blah.” Dropped like 5 or 6 F-bombs in this thing. I was just like, I’m glad it was after the event, because I would have called the dude out on stage and embarrassed him in front of everyone, which would have been amazing. I kind of wish I had that now.
But instead I saw it like two days ago. I was like, “What? Day one?” It’s funny, day two he came up to me afterwards and said, “I’m joining your Inner Circle, man. This has changed my life.” Did the whole thing. By the afternoon day two he had a change of heart, but after day one he was frustrated apparently because I didn’t teach enough tactics.
So a couple of things. First off, what you must understand is that tactics are good. Tactics are like the tricks you use to do things. But tactics in and of themselves are not that powerful. In fact, I think, when I first met Jay Abraham and Rick Shephard and the guys, they used to talk about this. Talk about how strategy is more important than tactics, and I used to think that were not smart. Because I’m like, “No, these tactics, these tricks, these tools, these things are the secret.” And as I’ve gotten older, in my old age, and I’ve shifted from being stuck at 2 or 3 million dollars a year, to shifting to 30 million dollars a year and beyond. Hopefully this year we’ll hit 80 or 90 million, and mass growth. Bigger than anyone I know of in our industry.
The big differentiation that took me from 2 or 3 million dollars a year to ten time that, it wasn’t the next tactic. It was the strategy, the strategy behind it. As I’m on stage teaching how to build a mass movement, I’m talking about the strategy of how you build a mass movement. This is how you get people to follow you, this is how I went from 3 million dollars, to two years later 30 million dollars in a year. The difference was not a magic tactic. And I showed tactics, I showed the different tactics, but it was the core strategy. When you understand the strategy there’s a lot of tactics inside of it, but understand the strategy is the key.
So we’re showing the strategy to everybody and I’m just hoping that you guys weren’t like this dude looking at this gold and being like, “but I came here for diamonds.” Dude, are you kidding me, take the gold I give you and go sell it and buy some diamonds if that’s what you really want. Don’t miss out on the lesson because you came thinking you were looking for something else. If there’s someone that’s showing you something, don’t be like….I was the same way. So I’m throwing myself as being guilty of this too. When I first talked to Shephard and Abraham, those guys who were way ahead of me strategically thinking, I used to make fun of them thinking they were dumb. Just like this guy was doing for me. I’m like, no when I understood it; I respected and understood that I gotta figure out the strategy.
The tactics are always there, the tactics will fit inside of any strategy, but the strategy is the key. That’s what expands your growth. And then, come on now, epiphany bridge story, the hero’s two journeys, that’s all tactical. Come on now. I’ll leave that there.
What I wanted to talk about is, as I was thinking through this, is I want to kind of tie in the tactic and strategy and all that kind of stuff. When I got started, whenever it was, 14 years ago, my first mentor was Mark Joyner, he always told me, “You gotta build a list, you gotta build a list.” Which is a strategy right. At the time there were a whole bunch of different strategies people were chasing. There was AdSense stuff, The was Google AdWords, there was Arbitros, there were all these different ways to make money. And Mark was my first mentor and luckily I listened to him by the shiny objects flying around me like crazy. So I started building a list, building a list, like he told me to.
And I did that and it was funny, a couple years later Mike Filsaime came out with, he kind of coined this originally, a lot of people say it since, but the first time I heard it, it was from Mike. He said, “You should average one dollar per month, per name on your email list.” I was like, okay, that’s a cool metric. I started looking back at what I was doing and it was interesting how close my business at that point had followed that. I had a thousand people on my list, I was making about a thousand a month, when I had ten thousand on my list I made ten thousand a month, when I had a hundred thousand on my list I was making a hundred thousand a month. It was eerie. Is that a word? How close that number stayed.
For me, I started focusing on the strategy is building a list. What are the tactics to build a list? I kept focusing on tactic, tactic, tactic to build a list. My list kept growing and my income would grow with it, but I didn’t have the huge shift. When we started shifting, I was telling this, last week, I can’t remember if I told you guys this or not. Dean Graziosi did this big book launch and he invited the top ten or fifteen affiliates to his office. So I flew down there Thursday and hung out, it was amazing. It was an amazing group. I could go on for days about all the people and what I learned. I got some amazing stuff that I will show you guys in the next few months. If you watch, you’ll see some of the stuff I learned from that group.
But what was interesting is, when I got there to talk, they wanted me to talk 30 minutes on whatever I thought was the biggest, most impactful thing in my business over the last few months. What did I share with them? I shared building a cult-ure. I talked about the three things. The thing I talked about first session of our group, we talked about charismatic leader, future based cause, and then new opportunity, which is the key. That’s the core strategy. What’s interesting is, I wasn’t planning on talking but when I got up on stage, I don’t know if you’ve done this when you’ve gotten on stage. Things pop into your head sometimes, so I got up in front of this group and the first thing that popped into my head was the Send out Cards event I went to 7, 8 or 9 years ago.
I remember going to this event all excited to learn network marketing and see how these guys do everything. And I was confused when I got there, to be honest. Nobody taught anything. I remember, the first day they gave awards to almost everyone in the group and they had people win cars, they had recognition, told stories, people crying about how sending cards changed their lives. And it was so confusing to me. I remember afterwards sitting there talking to David Frey, he probably doesn’t even remember this, but it had a huge impact on me. I was like, “Dude, nobody taught anything.” And he said, “You know what the craziest thing is Russell? They’re a software company. That’s it. They’re a software, but what have they done different? What was the strategy?” The tactic is how to build a software company, but what is the strategy? He didn’t say that, but I was thinking what is the strategy?
And we started talking and he said, “They’re a software company, but look what they built around it, it’s a movement. There’s people, this is a way of life for people now.” And I was thinking about it, send out cards, I love the guys who own that, it’s a cool company, but their software is not that good. There are thousands of better card editors out there. But they built a movement of people and that’s why that company did so well.
So when I was launching Clickfunnels that kept ringing in my head from David Frey. They’re just a software company. I’m like, “I’m building a software company.” I could have gone, what’s the tactic to build a software company. No, step back. What’s the strategy? How do these guys do it? They didn’t say, let’s build a software company. That wasn’t what they were doing; they were looking at the strategy of it. So as we launched Clickfunnels, I knew we were going to compete against, Infusionsoft, Leadpages, and all these crappy software products, and I was like, I don’t want this to become a battle of who’s got what feature. I want to build a movement. I want people, I want to build the best software in the world, and luckily I’ve got the partners that are able to do that, which is insanely cool.
But I was like. Even if our software sucked, I still gotta out market everyone else. Because I want them to follow us because we’re a movement, not because we’re a software company. If you were at Funnel Hacking Live, you remember Ryan
Montgomery, our CTO, he got up there and said, “hey guys, we’re not a technology company, we’re a marketing company. We’re building technology, the technology behind it to make us be able to market, which gives you the ability to market.”
That’s the big differentiator, that’s why we’re taking on the SASS companies that are fighting us on features and we’re thrashing them because we’re building a movement. And that’s the strategy. So I started looking at that, and I looked at our numbers over the last two years, and what’s funny, is for 8 years in my business, our metrics were one dollar per name per month on our list. And I look at our numbers now and I gotta do the math real quick in my head. But we are closer to probably 14 or 15 dollars per name per month on our email list. So we 15x’d it. Same people, same list building tactics to get people in, but the strategy shifted. What happened when we shifted the strategy? 15x, instead of one dollar per name per month on our email list, we make $15 per name per month on our email address, by shifting the strategy and the strategy was how do we build a movement? We’re not a software company, we’re building a movement.
I wanted people coming to Clickfunnels like they came to Send out Cards on stage crying because they send a card and it changed someone’s life. I don’t want them coming and talking about how much money they made. That’s the difference.
I just wanted to share that because I know sometimes we get caught up in what’s the new tactic. Some of my close friends are running an event this weekend coming up, and the difference, you go to that event and what do they do. There’s all these people on stage sharing tactics, and some people love that, but that’s not what wins wars. Tactics are the gun and the shot gun and rifle that you go out there, but if you got a bad strategy you’re going to lose.
So take a step back, look at the strategy and understand that, and hopefully this helps you understand the difference between strategy and tactics. How the tactics are good, but you switch to strategy and get that correct, 15x growth, going from 3 million to 30 million in 24 months. What’s the difference? It’s not changing my tactics, the tactics were all the same, it was the strategy behind it.
I hope that you guys get that. With that said, my fingers are freezing. I should have worn gloves out here. I’m going back inside. Appreciate you all, tomorrow I’m going to go finish…..Friday I spent the whole day recording the audio version of the Expert Secrets book and tomorrow I’m going to finish the last third. I drive out there, I have a message I want to share with you guys, but I’ll save that for tomorrow. Thanks everybody, have a great night and we’ll talk to you guys soon.